StupidiNews!

• The UN, citing the Red Cross/Red Crescent in Syria, are reporting some 200,000 have fled Aleppo ahead of  imminent open civil war for the country's second-largest city.
• Scientists are pushing for further exploration of one of Saturn's moons, Enceladus, a 310-mile rock complete with water and atmosphere.
• Fans and athletes alike are voicing concern to London games organizers about the number of tickets at events given to corporate sponsors and not being used.
• In a clear sign the luxury home market has recovered, sales of homes in the Hamptons on Long Island in New York are back to summer 2007 levels.
• Both Apple and Samsung will have to admit evidence in their patent trial battle as public knowledge, rankling both sides and worrying suppliers for both companies.

Last Call

Shorter Romney camp to America's press:  Know your role and shut your mouth as the Romney team decides to put an end to the gaffe factory by simply excluding the media on his trip to Israel.

Republican presidential hopeful Mitt Romney, who touched down here Saturday night for a day of meetings with top Israeli and Palestinian leaders, plans to wrap up his visit to Israel by collecting money from some of his biggest benefactors behind closed doors.

Some of Romney’s Jewish donors are flying here from the United States to attend the Jerusalem fundraiser on Monday morning, including Las Vegas casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, who has pledged to personally give tens of millions of dollars to a pro-Romney super PAC.

But Romney’s campaign announced Saturday that it would block the news media from covering the event, which will be held at the King David Hotel. The campaign’s decision to close the fundraiser to the press violates the ground rules it negotiated with news organizations in April, when Romney wrapped up the Republican nomination and began opening some of his finance events to the news media.

Under the agreement, a pool of wire, print and television reporters can cover every Romney fundraiser held in public venues, including hotels and country clubs. The campaign does not allow media coverage of fundraisers held in private residences.

Campaign spokesman Rick Gorka declined to explain the campaign’s decision to violate protocol with the Jerusalem event. Pressed repeatedly by reporters to offer an explanation, Gorka said only that the fundraiser was “closed press.”

“That’s all I’ve got for you — it’s closed press,” Gorka said. 

Translation:  screw you for the London trip.  Your job is to help Mitt get elected, not "report objectively on the facts".  This is the Romney camp putting the media "in its place" for daring to report on unflattering news.  LA Times political reporter Maeve Reston summed it up on Twitter:

The length to which Romney has gone to try to avoid making news on this trip is beyond mind-bending. Why are we here again? 

To which she gets a brutally truthful answer from National Review's John Podhoretz:

@MaeveReston Who told you to go along?

Such is our "media".  The Romney camp declared you the enemy weeks ago if you had been paying attention.

By the way, can you imagine what kind of coverage and what kind of screaming Barack Obama would have gotten by going to a foreign country, holding a fundraiser with billionaire fat cats, and then closing it to the press?

Think about it.

Arms Akimbo

Negotiations for the UN Small Arms Treaty, globally regulating the flow of firearms, has completely collapsed.  Some are blaming President Obama.  Smarter people are blaming the NRA and the gun lobby that controls our politics.

The United Nations indefinitely suspended action on an international arms trade treaty Friday after the United States and several other countries asked for more time.

The decision sparked angry reactions from human rights groups often allied with the Obama administration, who believed a treaty to regulate the export of deadly weapons to rogue regimes was within reach. The UN had spent the entire month of July hammering out a deal, and Friday was the deadline for an agreement on a treaty that has met with the staunch opposition of the National Rifle Association and bipartisan concerns in the Senate.

“This was stunning cowardice by the Obama administration, which at the last minute did an about-face and scuttled progress toward a global arms treaty, just as it reached the finish line,” said Suzanne Nossel, the executive director of Amnesty International USA. “It’s a staggering abdication of leadership by the world’s largest exporter of conventional weapons to pull the plug on the talks just as they were nearing an historic breakthrough that would have required all nations to deny arms export licenses where there was an overriding risk that the weapons would be used to facilitate serious crimes against humanity.”

And Scott Stedjan, Oxfam America’s senior policy advisor, called the failure “a tremendous loss for thousands of innocent civilians around the globe who die each year from armed violence fueled by the unregulated transfer of arms.”

The treaty never would have passed the Senate, period.  Under no circumstances would the United States ever ratify an international gun control law.  Blaming President Obama for "stunning cowardice" is pointless when our Senate is bought and paid for by the NRA and firearms makers.  The treaty itself only affected transfers of firearms to foreign countries and specifically was changed to protect the Second Amendment, but that of course meant the gun makers couldn't ship thousands of weapons to rogue regimes and warlords willing to pay big bucks.

Doesn't matter.  Our society is ill and corrupt in many ways, and this is one that will continue to kill for years to come.

Touching Story Passes Snopes Test

Ah, Snopes, you made me proud today.

I compulsively check the rumor-crushing site that lets me know when circulating stories are made up or embellished.  I checked this one out, fully expecting it to be confirmed as too good to be true.  Stuff like this doesn't just happen.  Except this time it did.  That awkward moment when you expect something to fail and it blows you away instead.

The super condensed version will never touch the full story, so please read it here.  The condensed version goes like this: 12-year-old boy has been sick his entire life.  After beating leukemia for a third time he contracts a brain infection that is going to kill him because of his compromised immune system.  He has expressed repeated admiration for Marines.  The Marines decide to make him an honorary member.  The boy's health fails, and one soldier stood guard outside his hospital room all night until he passed away.  The solider and the boy's family stay in touch.

That's all I can do without tearing up, but please check it out.

Senseless Stupidity

(CBS News) WASHINGTON, Mo. - A 17-year-old Missouri mother was killed when her car was hit by a truck driven by a 13-year-old girl.

Authorities say a Franklin County Deputy was on Highway 47 around 12:04 a.m. early Friday when he saw the 13-year-old's truck cross the shoulder line.

The deputy tried to make a stop, but the suspect did not yield.

Deputies said the driver lost control of the truck while approaching the intersection of Highway 47 and Highway 100. The truck then hit 17-year-old Aubrey Nothum's Mazda, which was stopped at a traffic light.

This is the sort of thing that I read over with my niece and nephew.  They are old enough to think up stunts like this and young enough to possibly give in to stupidity.  The reality is, dumb kids do this all the time.  Unfortunately, the reality is also that things like this can happen.  A mother gone, a child left to grow up never having known her, and a teenager left with guilty and memories that will never go away.  Everybody loses, and it was all preventable.

I Was Blind But Now I See

The conversion of climate change skeptic and UC Berkeley physics professor Richard Mueller to a believer in the overwhelming data supporting man-made climate shifts was to be expected, but let's remember that his skepticism was turned into a cause celebre' by the wingers and the Koch Foundation, who gave him a lot of money in order to test his skepticism.  He did and found that it's the deniers on the right who have always been full of hot air.

My total turnaround, in such a short time, is the result of careful and objective analysis by the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, which I founded with my daughter Elizabeth. Our results show that the average temperature of the earth’s land has risen by two and a half degrees Fahrenheit over the past 250 years, including an increase of one and a half degrees over the most recent 50 years. Moreover, it appears likely that essentially all of this increase results from the human emission of greenhouse gases. 

These findings are stronger than those of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the United Nations group that defines the scientific and diplomatic consensus on global warming. In its 2007 report, the I.P.C.C. concluded only that most of the warming of the prior 50 years could be attributed to humans. It was possible, according to the I.P.C.C. consensus statement, that the warming before 1956 could be because of changes in solar activity, and that even a substantial part of the more recent warming could be natural. 

Our Berkeley Earth approach used sophisticated statistical methods developed largely by our lead scientist, Robert Rohde, which allowed us to determine earth land temperature much further back in time. We carefully studied issues raised by skeptics: biases from urban heating (we duplicated our results using rural data alone), from data selection (prior groups selected fewer than 20 percent of the available temperature stations; we used virtually 100 percent), from poor station quality (we separately analyzed good stations and poor ones) and from human intervention and data adjustment (our work is completely automated and hands-off). In our papers we demonstrate that none of these potentially troublesome effects unduly biased our conclusions. 

I'm hoping that this will put an end to the debate and allow the country and the world to move on to try to do anything before it's too late.   Sadly, there's little to no chance of that as long as Republicans and the uncaring corporate masters remain in power over our political process.  Mueller too calls for action:

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years. 

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done. 

Sadly, as long as our politics are controlled by people who believe that evolution never happened and that the Earth is 6,000 years old, we will continue to do absolutely nothing.  Another 1.5 degrees in 20 years would be a catastrophe.  And yet if nothing changes, the summer of 2012 here in the US will be considered mild by comparison very very soon.

Last Call

Here's hoping House Republican Ways and Means Committee chair Dave Camp of Michigan recovers fully from his recent diagnosis of treatable cancer, he has non-Hodgkins lymphoma and will be undergoing chemo treatment.

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp has been diagnosed with a "very early, highly treatable and curable" type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and will undergo chemotherapy during the next few months, his office announced Saturday.

As chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Camp heads one of the most powerful panels on Capitol Hill. The news comes as the House is set to vote on an extension of all the Bush-era tax rates for one additional year, with guidelines for enacting comprehensive tax reform in 2013.

Per the statement from Camp's office:

“After a recent routine yearly physical, it was discovered that I have a very early, highly treatable and curable type of non-Hodgkins lymphoma – large B-cell lymphoma. My treatment will take place every three weeks over the next few months. It will consist of a series of chemotherapy sessions. In between treatments I will continue my work as a United States Representative for Michigan’s Fourth District and as Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee. Thankfully my health is otherwise excellent and my doctors and I expect a full recovery and cure. My family and I appreciate the support, good wishes and understanding we have received.”

That's good to hear, all politics aside, cancer is something I would never want to see anyone suffering from.

Having said that, as a member of Congress, Dave Camp has no worries about medical bankruptcy or being able to pay his medical bills, and he'll get the best treatment available, even if he wasn't a multimillionaire.

And Dave Camp has a serious problem it seems with people getting health insurance assistance from the government.  Oh, not seniors on Medicare, no.  Just poor people who probably vote Democrat if they vote at all.  He says he wants to craft "common-sense solutions" but of course he has no actual plan.  None of them do.

But he has no problem with you going bankrupt trying to treat your cancer, our Dave.

It's nice to be one of the one percent, isn't it?  Now shut up and get back to work.

Re-Birther Of The Uncool, Part 5

The racist birther assholes will never accept a black President, so they will keep up with the BLACKITY BLACK BLACK birther nonsense for the rest of eternity.



This is what we're up against, folks. This is how Mitt Romney will be your next President unless you give enough of a damn to vote.

Game On In London

Going to have a series of updates of Olympic action daily, so if you're trying to avoid results until NBC's tape delayed nonsense...why are you on the internet in 2012?  Seriously, adapt.

Anyway, I have to lead off with JM Ashby's epic rant against NBC's awful plan last night to A) not livestream the opening ceremonies live and B) turn the 3 hour proceedings into nearly 5 hours of commercials interspersed with Matt Lauer refusing to shut the hell up.

Co-anchors Matt Lauer and Meredith Vieira spent the next several hours cracking the Macy’s Day Parade equivalent of fart jokes concerning everything from the dramatic opening ceremony, to the names of some the nations in attendance, to the uniforms worn by some of the athletes, to the demeanor of Queen Elizabeth. And that was between the more than a dozen commercial breaks to sell us boner bills, luxury cars, and anti-Obama attack ads.

Professional pontificator and obvious Romney fanboy Bob Costas also chimed in to say that no matter what your political ideology is, you “have to admit Romney saved the Olympics.”

No, Bob. No we do not. Although if you want to discuss how Romney accepted a federal bailout of the Olympics, I’m game.

Both the overseas reaction to Mitt Romney’s London stumble tour and NBC’s shithouse coverage of the opening day of the Olympics reminded me just how embarrassing, incompetent, and unprofessional the American media is. And not to absolve ourselves from blame — Americans have also become too complacent. We don’t demand better, and it’s time for us to start.

Amen to that, JM.  Amen to that.

Hot Dog, What A Conundrum

Nathan Duszynksi, 13, said he decided to open a hot dog stand in his hometown of Holland, Mich., to help out his disabled parents. His mother has epilepsy and his father has multiple sclerosis.

He saved $1,200 – mostly money he made by mowing lawns and shoveling snow – and bought a cart.

He also checked with the city to make sure he didn’t need any licenses or permits, and even went to city hall in person with his mother.

“We wanted to make sure,” Nathan’s mother Lynette Johnson told WFMY News. “We stopped in there in person about a month ago and asked, ‘Do we need a business permit license?’ and [the city] said no.”  

Only 10 minutes after arriving to set up Nathan’s Hot Dog Hut on July 17, a city zoning official shut him down.

The problem was the location.  The city was unable to allow him to sell hot dogs from that particular spot.  However, they expressed regret, and are trying to find ways to help the boy make this work.  He's a good kid and he followed all the proper channels in an effort to be responsible.  While all food carts are banned from this area, the ban isn't citywide.  It's nice to see them work to try to find a compromise, or change the ordinance.

To add more generosity of spirit, a local business bought the food cart at a significant profit to Nathan.  They will allow him to use it for special occasions.

That's doing it right.

What A Pip

The Jackson Family Meltdown of 2012 has everyone talking, from water cooler conversation to celebrities throwing in their two cents. Gladys Knight even had something to say on a "The Talk" recently:

Thanks to the fine folks at TMZ:

Gladys appeared on "The Talk" Thursday ... saying, "Paris is 14? How old is Janet? Who's the one to try to direct the other one here? I would think it's a good thing [Janet] lets Paris know who she is."

Gladys added, "If [Paris] called me that, she would have no teeth ... That's how we were brought up. You respect your elders."

I would like to point out that it would help if the elders acted like elders.  Or acted like they gave a crap about the kids and their welfare.  Or about their brother, who died too young.  Nope, they care that the cash cow is dead and the money is up for grabs.  They should be ashamed of themselves, even if the drugging and other rumors turn out to be false.

Personally, I admire Paris Jackson.  She is too young to be facing all of this.  Whether through drugs or poor judgment, Katherine Jackson abandoned them and left them at the mercy of the siblings who are trying to tear the family apart for profit.  Paris showed she has some spine, and I have yet to hear of her chasing down the Jackson family members to start trouble with them.  So already, she's one up on the "elders" so deserving of their respect.

I think it's surprising that some folks totally understand why Katherine Jackson was exhausted, and why they siblings are so stressed, but nobody considers that this young girl is not only involved in the same exhausting situation, most of it is directly coming at her.  Her family is hostile right now and she only has her own siblings to look to for comfort.

You can watch the video to see how Janet acted, reaching to snatch a phone out of her niece's hands and  according to multiple sources calling her a spoiled little bitch.  On video, Janet was the one blocking her entry into the home, invading her personal space and trying to intimidate a child.  Paris remained calm, stood and looked her right in the face and told her to get the eff out of her house.  Now, how old is Janet?  How old is Paris?  Who acted like the grownup?

Nuff said.  Get these kids some real protection from these vultures.  And someone get Gladys Knight a tall, refreshing glass of STFU while we're waiting.  Advocating knocking the teeth out of a girl who has been through the death of a parent and the harassment of family (to the point of it likely being criminal) ever since that death... well, I say she gets to stand up for herself.  She has a right to be royally pissed.  Paris Jackson  knows more about what's going on that we do, Knight, or even the investigators.  So far that kid has shown more character and composure than most of the people surrounding her.  Let's give her our best, shall we?

Romney's Really Silly Israeli Melee

TPM's Paul Werdel has an interesting theory on the latest Republican poutrage involving White House spokeman Jay Carney and Israel:

The Romney campaign had at time of writing on Friday sent out two separate e-mail press releases chiding the Obama administration for its “refusal to say whether Jerusalem is the capital of Israel.”
One quoted House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, and another, former Minnesota Senator and Romney surrogate Norm Coleman.

Now it’s worth noting this was long the easy rhetoric of some of the less serious contenders throughout the GOP primary. But coming from Romney, the party’s nominee-to-be, it would signal something far more significant.

I suppose it’s possible the Romney campaign is so unaware of the realities of the Middle East peace process, however moribund it may be, that they’re unconcerned with just how inflammatory an American president’s expression of support for an undivided Jerusalem as the capital of Israel would be to the Arab world. But even with the stumbles Mitt Romney has made this week on the international stage, that seems unlikely.

So, accepting that Romney is aware of the significance, it seems likely he’s prepared to signal a very real, very controversial departure from decades of U.S. peacemaking policy, and put the weight of his potential presidency behind a declaration that he believes Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. That would be a very big deal. 

I'm going to go with Occam's Razor here and say that given the evidence of the last month and especially the last week, the Romney campaign is staffed by foreign policy morons and/or cynics who will simply assume that FOX viewers don't know any better, so it's completely fine for them to say "Carney won't admit that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel! LOL!  OBAMA IS SO STUPID!" and they'll get away with it.  I'm leaning towards the latter, but the former cannot be completely discounted, either.

Werdel has some serious journalism chops coming to TPM from Al Jazeera English and BBC News and I'm glad to see such a blindingly qualified hire for Josh Marshall, but I'm going to respectfully volunteer that he has a bit to learn about how "journalism" in the United States works, especially when it comes to Republicans manipulating their base with voltage spikes to the lizard brain.  The average American will tell you of course Jerusalem is the capital of Israel and won't think twice about Tel Aviv, Haifa, or any other city in the country, completely unaware of the nuance or the internationally disputed status of the city.

I suppose the Romney campaign could be fronting Jerusalem as Israel's capital as a major US policy shift, but I would count that as the least likely.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

How much do the wingers hate President Obama?   This much.

Be more interesting. Share your news.

This billboard is currently up in Caldwell, Idaho near Boise in the state's Treasure Valley region.  Yeah, I know Idaho is about as red as it gets out west, but even the stoic people of Boise are a bit taken aback by, you know, openly comparing the President to a mass murder suspect.

The group that owns the board, The Ralph Smeed Foundation, says it wants to draw attention to military men and women dying overseas.

"(It's) way over the line, and I am not an Obama supporter," Lynn Davis Hathaway, said on the KBOI 2News Facebook page.

Hmm, the Ralph Smeed Foundation? Seems Idaho's most famous "libertarian" died in 2010.

Smeed, who was 88 years old, served in the Army during World War II, and then returned to his hometown of Caldwell.  He became active in Republican politics before starting his newspaper column in the Lewiston Morning Tribune in 1974.  He also started a think-tank called the Center for the Study of Market Alternatives in 1976, which published some of his writing.

Rick Coffman, a newspaper editor who became friends with Smeed in the early 1970s, carried Smeed’s columns in the Idaho Press-Tribune each Sunday on the editorial page.  “Ralph was all about ideas and principles, that those would sustain the country through good times and bad,” Coffman said.

 “Ralph fought all his life for what he believed – the value of a limited government, individuals having the freedom to choose what is best for them, that when government does something ‘for’ someone it does something else ‘to’ another someone.”

Coffman added, “Ralph is the only person I have ever known who I am convinced did exactly what he wanted to do every day of his life. We should all be so lucky.”

Many people learned of Smeed’s views from his reader board that included both policy opinions and partisan jokes, including “I would rather go hunting with Dick Cheney than riding in a car with Ted Kennedy.”  Smeed received some notoriety in the past few years for messages questioning President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.

The three word slogan at the top of the reader board, “Making Statism Unpopular,” may been the message he was most interested in promoting.

Oh good, he was basically Glenn Greenwald's cranky uncle from the Gem State.  And of course he was an Obama-hating birther asshole.  All "libertarians" are it seems.

Just call him Hitler already.

Oh wait, the wingers did that too.

StupidiNews, Weekend Edition!

• Both the al-Assad regime and Syrian rebels are entrenched and facing off in a fierce battle over the country's second-largest city, Aleppo.
• America was about the only major country not allowed to watch the London opening ceremonies live as NBC only showed the proceedings by tape delay.
• The Obama administration, seemingly bowing to pressure from the National Rifle Association, is backing away from the UN Small Arms Treaty.
• Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner will meet with his German and European Central Bank counterparts in high-level talks on Monday for a European financial rescue plan.
• Multiple law firms are now investigating what could be insider trading of web game darling Zynga, whose stock crashed this week on lousy earnings.

Last Call

Remember, racism simply doesn't exist anymore because we have an African-American President.

A black couple in Crystal Springs, Missouri says that a predominantly white Baptist church refused to let them get married because of their race.

Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.

“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson explained.

“He had people in the sanctuary that were pitching a fit about us being a black couple,” Te’Andrea Wilson added. “I didn’t like it at all, because I wasn’t brought up to be racist. I was brought up to love and care for everybody.”

Dr. Stan Weatherford, the church’s pastor, was forced to perform the marriage at another church after he was taken by surprise by his congregation’s outrage.

“This had never been done before here, so it was setting a new precedent, and there are those who reacted to that because of that,” Weatherford said. “I didn’t want to have a controversy within the church, and I didn’t want a controversy to affect the wedding of Charles and Te’ Andrea. I wanted to make sure their wedding day was a special day.”

Church officials said they would hold meetings to decide what to do if another non-white couple wanted to use their facility in the future. They insisted that all races were welcome at the church.

Oh you're welcome...unless you want to get married.  Otherwise, take your blackity black black asses on outta here.   If you're wondering why I'm agnostic and for marriage equality, this nonsense right here is exactly why.  Explain to me when all these asshole conservatives do is say "You black people don't have good Christian values like we do" and then when you get a black couple willing to join your congregation and get married at your church, you threaten to vote them out?

What the hell makes you think they would want to stay after that?  Where are the loving values you claim to hold dear when you do this to anyone?  I'd say you should be ashamed, but that apparently left the train station years ago.  Do you teach your kids these values, so that 25 years from now a new generation has to put up with this stupid, racist garbage, too?

I don't know what to think, other than it's been a looooooong day.